It’s important to stay focused in creating unique, interesting, relevant, inspiring, authentic, or even entertaining content, while still keeping in mind your target audience and your set goals.

An effective content strategy helps you aim for long-term success, with virality serving as a bonus achievement, which you should be happy to welcome.

The rise of negative virality

There is an increase in negative virality on the internet and it has affected the online reputation of many brands.

This rise can be attributed to the human psychology and the way we react to negative stories, bad news, brand fails, or any other controversy.

Although people prefer reading positive stories, it’s the anger that serves as a driving force to make us share a negative story, and this leads to the outrage that we frequently come across on social media.

Users are inclined to spread the negative virality, which may create big problems for brands that are not ready to respond to it by the time it starts spreading.

There is no such thing as bad publicity and it might be true if a brand knows how to overturn a negative situation

However, not every viral story has a happy ending and here are several different examples to consider.

When virality goes wrong

1. Puppy Monkey

Mountain Dew decided to stand out from other Super Bowl commercials this year and the Puppy Monkey Baby led them to the desired virality. With more than 22 million views on its Youtube channel and 65,000 mentions of the #PuppyMonkeyBaby hashtag, the campaign is certainly considered successful.

The popularity of the commercial derives from the commercial’s main character, a combination of a puppy, a monkey, and a baby, which turned out into a nightmare for many people.

It’s interesting to note that 54% of the buzz for #PuppyMonkeyBaby was negative, which means that the majority of people who talked about it didn’t necessarily like it.

The user’s goal was to highlight the waste of plastic for this idea and the tweet ultimately gathered eight million impressions and a much-anticipated response from Whole Foods:

Definitely our mistake. These have been pulled. We hear you, and we will leave them in their natural packaging: the peel.

Whole Foods took advantage of the sudden virality and created a new image, this time with no use of plastic for the oranges. This is a clever way to overturn a bad situation without affecting the reputation of your brand.

3. Hyundai

Hyundai’s first Super Bowl ad this year had the hashtag with the most negative sentiment, as 77.6% of the tweets using #HyundaiSuperBowl were negative.

This was due to the appearance of Ryan Reynolds, the star of Deadpool, and the movie’s fan base, as they weren’t very happy with the way Deadpool’s Twitter account was used along with Hyundai.

Thus, this negative sentiment was not directly related to Hyundai, but the brand was aware of a possible controversy its choice of the actor would bring, which can be translated to additional social reach.

4. DiGiorno

DiGiorno pizza wanted to join a trending discussion to appeal to an extended audience back in 2014, and the virality was even better than expected, but for the least preferred reason.

They used the trending hashtag #WhyIStayed, creating the message: #WhyIStayed You had pizza.”

Although it seemed like a good idea to them, the hashtag was actually used as part of a domestic violence awareness campaign, which means that their tweet annoyed many people who rushed to indicate their lack of context.

We heard from many of you, and we know we disappointed you. We understand, and we apologize to everyone for this mistake.

It took Red Lobster 10 hours to craft a relevant tweet, with users not being impressed by the reply, but it ultimately took advantage of the sudden popularity during the following days, both on social media and in-store marketing.

https://twitter.com/redlobster/status/696437834312458240

As the appraisal from such a popular influencer is worth more than any other marketing campaign, Red Lobster created posters with Beyonce in order to promote its stores and of course, her song started playing at the stores. Needless to say that the sales on the specific weekend rose 33% over last year.

See, even a delayed response on sudden virality may lead to impressive results. All you need is to seize the opportunity.

*Formation by Beyoncé plays on the radio*mom: is this the red lobster song?

6. #RIPTwitter

It was just a few months ago when Twitter users got furious over the rumours that Twitter is about to introduce a non-chronological timeline, which will rely on an algorithm that will sort the tweets accordingly.

Twitter for me is the difference between being alone and being lonely. With algorithms I'll potentially be invisible again. #RIPTwitter

Twitter users started discussing the end of Twitter and #RIPTwitter became the most popular hashtag of the day, until Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, decided to clear things out with a series of tweets.

For the record, the algorithmic timeline is now available as an option, which means that Twitter managed to let users vent and decided to strike back on it own subtle way, proving that not every outrage that takes place on social media is actually valid.

Hello Twitter! Regarding #RIPTwitter: I want you all to know we're always listening. We never planned to reorder timelines next week.

7. Starbucks

As the popularity of the brand increases, so does the virality of an outrage. Starbucks faced such a case during Christmas, when it decided to replace its yearly Christmas cups with a simpler, red version of them.

The customers were not very happy about it, which led to numerous complaints over social networks, with #MerryChristmasStarbucks counting 474,000 mentions over the week.

Now @Starbucks is blowing off Christmas with their non-Christmas coffee cups. I'll never step into a Starbucks again. #boycottstarbucks

Not everyone agreed with this complaint though, with #itsjustacup also trending, reminding everyone that there’s no need to be frustrated for a coffee cup.

Starbucks preferred not to interfere on this “battle” and they were probably right, using the power of silence, even if it’s difficult to achieve it nowadays, when it’s tempting to reply back to someone mentioning you.

This was the beginning of a negative virality, full of similar pricey stories from Uber drivers, with Uber ultimately paying half the fare for Matthew Lindsay, although it reminded everyone that these increases during rush hours are expected and users should be aware of them.

Thus, the model hasn’t changed, they only turned around a specific complaint, asking from the users to be better informed next time they are about to complain about #ubersurge.

Although we’re not sure how the first lady reacted to these, it’s still an interesting use of social media and an observation on how users behave when they are not happy with an incident in their everyday lives.

Volkswagen tried to avoid further reactions at that time by pausing any social posts on Facebook and Twitter, until its CEO posted a public statement. This lasted more than a week, and although it might be considered a safe choice for a company dealing with such an important case, it still wasn’t pleasantly welcomed by consumers who wanted to be informed as fast as possible.

Marketers create personas to better understand their target audience and what it looks like. If marketers can understand potential buyer behaviors, and where they spend their time online, then content can be targeted more effectively.